Shawl done

Today has been a little bit of a random day. I saw a guy trying to open a car using a coat hanger, so I called the police. Turns out that it was a guy trying to get into his own car, but it was pretty crazy. I felt a little bit silly about having essentially wasted police time, but better safe than sorry, and I had no way of knowing that it was his car. If someone was trying to break into my car, I would hope that someone would call the police.

In happier yarn news, I have finished the wedding shawl.

It is unblocked right now. I need to give it a really good soak with some vinegar in the water as this yarn bled badly over my hands, and I want to block it closer to the wedding. I know some people feel the project isn't truly complete until the blocking is done, but I am still counting this as a win.
Shawl took 1136 yds of Fyberspates Gleem Lace in Deep Aqua. Link to project page. I really loved knitting this. It took me a couple of months but I blame the fact that I wanted the shawl to be huge, and the fact that beading takes a lot of time. Also, there is a lot of yarn in there. Just over a kilometer in fact, which kind of blows my mind a little.

We went to see the wedding site at the weekend, and it turns out that the site owners have sheep that they sheer and they have fleeces they want to get rid of. They seemed really open to the idea of me having the fleeces, which is very very exciting indeed. I have found somewhere that will process the fleece for me because the thought of skirting and washing and hand carding a whole fleece is not my idea of a good time. So at some point in the future, I may become the happy owner of a large amount of fiber to spin and dye and knit.

I have been massively neglecting my spinning lately, mostly because I was caught up in Christmas projects and then the shawl. I intend to rectify this, but possibly not tonight, as it is knit night.

I finished the first sock of the

Tired

I've been away for work for a couple of days this week, and while it's been good, I am now ridiculously tired. 

It's been lovely though to see the start of spring beginning to show itself. 

In knitting news, I messed up on the wedding shawl. I forgot, in my calculations of how much I had left to knit, about border chart 4. Lots more knitting to go than I thought, but still plenty of time until September when it needs to be finished. 

As I spoke about before, I finished my MKAL. I even blocked it this weekend. 

Sadly I wasn't a fan of the result. I love the colour, but the finished shawl just seems lacking in something to me. It just seemed a bit... Meh. 

Luckily a friend of mine likes it a lot, so it is going to be a gift for his mother for Mother's Day. 

Eager

I have a half day today at work.
To me this means an afternoon of going to the gym, doing some housework and knitting.

At the moment when I have a long stretch of knitting time, the only thing to work on is the wedding shawl.

I've posted this picture before, but it's the one I have right now

I am on row 14 of border chart 2, meaning there are 2 more beaded rows, and less than 20 rows until I finish the shawl. That doesn't sound like much, but there are a huge number of stitches in each row, so it's not a quick job.

As with so many projects, when the end is in sight I want to knit this all the time, and I want it to be done NOW.

Ben and I are taking a road trip tomorrow, and we have friends over on Sunday evening, so the chances of finishing the shawl this weekend are not large. But in my brain, there is hope. I don't know why I'm in such a rush to finish this - there is plenty of time before the wedding. I think perhaps because I have a lot of self imposed rules about what I can knit and what I can cast on until this is done. Once it's done I won't worry that it won't be done in time, either.

So, happy Friday everyone. I hope you get lots of crafting time this weekend.

On Shawls

Reading back through past entries, I have some shawls to update you on.

I finished my Orchid Thief some months ago, and finally got round to blocking it this weekend. What can I say? I am not good at motivating myself to do blocking. I think I feel like I'm not very good at it.

It was an enjoyable pattern, though I knitted from the book Brave New Knits rather than the PDF, and there are some issues with clarity. I managed okay, though, and I am very fond of the final product.

I also finished the sample I was knitting for Jon at www.easyknits.co.uk, and sent that off.

I have rather a lot of Jon's yarn in my stash, and so I decided to knit a Wingspan. Not a huge amount to say about this pattern that hasn't been said a million times on the internet already. It's a great pattern, shows hand dyed yarns off beautifully and is easy to knit.

I need to stop taking FO pics over the back of my armchair. They are not good pictures.
This project has already gone to it's new owner.

Finally, I plod along with my Southern Skies. I desperately love this shawl, and it's not far away from having to decide what edging to use. Right now, however its rather a big bunch of beaded blue yarn with many, many stitch markers.

After the wedding shawl is done, I am planning on putting some serious time into this and getting it done.

Catchup continued - hat edition

Since I stopped blogging, I made a couple of hats.

One of them came about because I had a business trip to Russia at the end of November, and I knew it was going to be cold. The cold in Russia is pretty legendary, and while I was lucky with the weather, I was also very glad that I had knitted myself a hat to wear.

I actually realised I needed a hat only about a fortnight before I left, so I wanted something from stash to knit with, and a nice quick pattern.
I chose Knit Night Hat by Judy Marples and it is a fantastic pattern. Quick, easy, really well written, and the finished object is just lovely. From my stash I pulled out a lovely skein of Araucania Puelo. In the UK this yarn is 100% llama, but from what I understand in the USA it is 100% alpaca. It's a DK weight.

The hat turned out perfectly. The llama yarn is amazingly soft and snuggly warm. My only regret is that the picture of the FO is somewhat dark. I must get organised and take a better one.

The other hat I knit recently was in a panic just before Christmas when I realised that the Super Secret Christmas Socks were not going to be finished on time, and I wanted there to be something knitted for Ben under the tree.
So I knit a Capuchine (pattern by Adela Illichmanova)... which still wasn't finished for opening presents at Christmas. I managed to finish it during Christmas day, though, so all was not lost.
Yarn was mostly Freedom Spirit Chunky from stash, until I ran out. Then it was odds and ends from stash all held together.

The pom poms and tassles were fun to do - I haven't made a pom pom since my days in the girl guides! The hat was very well received.

More catch up tomorrow - I will probably end up posting less when I am all caught up, but right now it is really nice to get back into blogging.

Wedding Knitting

It seems that the date for the wedding is getting closer and closer (time passing as it is wont to do, I suppose).

My current plan is to knit a shawl for me, and some matching socks for Ben. By matching, I mean in the same colourway from the same dyer, not similar patterns.

The yarn I chose for the shawl was Fyberspates Gleem Lace in Deep Aqua.

Colour isn't terribly accurate here

It is the most lovely yarn. One thing I will say about it is that when I knit with it, it turns my hands utterly blue. However from some comments from the dyer, I think it should be okay if I leave it soaking overnight in vinegar before blocking.

The pattern is Sheherazade Beaded Lace Shawl by Anna Victoria. I've chosen to go with 6 repeats of the body pattern. This means that the edging rows are super long, and somewhat tedious.

Edging rows, I hear you cry?

Why, yes, the end is in sight. I'm about 14 rows from finishing it, and only two of those are beaded, so I am truly hoping to get it finished in the next couple of weeks. With a good headwind (read, lots of time spent at home) I may have it done in as little as a week.

Colour much more accurate here

The yarn for the wedding socks has been ordered. I'm going for Fyberspates Vivacious 4ply also in deep aqua. We are still negotiating the pattern - we both really like Firestarter by Yarnissima, but from the notes the pattern is a bit of a pain in the arse, so the hunt continues.

Travel knitting is still my Earl Grey socks, and I honestly can't believe how fast they are going. Maybe socks don't take forever if they aren't all in 2x2 rib?

Rubbish blogger

Gosh, I've been a bad blogger. I have left the poor blog unattended for far too long. Still, I'm back now. 

The inspiration for coming back is partly a lot of the wonderful blogs I read regularly, and partly a visit I made to Chester this weekend. Aimee from a podcast I listen to, Knit, Spin, Cake, and Nic from the Yarns From The Plain podcast had organised a retreat. I didn't go to the retreat but I did go over and meet with them on the Saturday, and had a wonderful time. It led me to thinkng about knitters, and about community, and about trying to be less shy with other knitters, and less scared of the community aspects of knitting. So, I reatart the blog. 

In terms of what I have been knitting, it felt for a while as if I was knitting and knitting and knitting and getting nothing finished. I hate that feeling - it frustrates me no end. But I think I've reached a point with my WIPs where I am starting to finish some significant things, and that feels better. 

I won't post about everything now, I will leave some things for future posts (means there are more likely to be future posts!) but I would like to post about socks. 

Last year, I made Ben some secret Chrostmas socks, and he was really pleased. I was pleased. Everyone was pleased. 

With that much being pleased, I decided to do the whole thing again. At Yarndale with the help of some friends I covertly purchased some yarn (Laal Bear) and cast in with loads of time. So I thought. 

For those who don't know Ben, he is 6'6 and wears a size 13 shoe. This means there are some patterns I've tried for him where one skein of yarn just wasn't enough (this with men's socks is why Jon from easyknits started the big boy range of yarns in 150g skeins). So I bought two skeins. 

Remember, I had loads and loads of time. Months, in fact. 

So I decided to knit each sock out of a whole skein, each skein being 'only' 333yds. 

Ben had also requested at some point that I knit him socks with a princess sole. I felt that these super secret Christmas socks would be a great place to do that. 

I cast on. I knit and knit. I remembered that I hate purling on DPNs. And I knit. 

I hadn't taken into consideration that my job allows me much less knitting time on my commute now. I hadn't taken into consideration the yards and yards of 2x2 rib that I think honestly sapped my soul. 

For Christmas, Ben got a sock and a toe. 

I finally finished the Super Socks of Doom in the middle of February. 

The colour is less accurate in this picture. But they are huge. And he loves them. 

I'm at knit night tonight, and my travel project? Another pair of socks for Ben. I must be some kind of sucker.